Certain mercantile establishments such as jewelers, candy shops, etc., make their living by selling comparatively small items which are displayed to customers under and/or behind glass or similarly transparent or partially transparent display case surfaces. The customer selects an item to examine and perhaps purchase, by pointing out to the merchant, the particular item on the opposite side of the display case surface which the customer wishes to inspect and/or purchase. But for comparatively small items, for example, jewelry, or candy items, which are often displayed close to one another, merely pointing to the desired ring, earring, watch, piece of chocolate, etc. with the customer's finger often requires several iterations of trial and error back and forth between the customer and the merchant before the merchant properly identifies which item the customer has in mind. The customer may point through the transparent or partially transparent display case surface and say “that one,” to which the merchant may reply by picking out an item and inquiring “this one?” To which the customer may say “no, two over to the left.” The merchant might then pick up another item and say “is this it?” To which the customer says “almost, but one row up.” The merchant then finally picks up the correct item, says “this one?” And finally, the customer says, “yes, that one!” It would be desirable to eliminate this iterative process, and have available a device and associated method of use which enables the customer to designate which item he or she has in mind for selection, with no room for miscommunication, so that the merchant can retrieve the intended item immediately, correctly, always, the very first time around.
FIG. 1 illustrates a laser light pointer 1 in an elongated “pen” form commonly seen in the prior art. This “laser pen” has elongated handle/casing 11 which is customarily gripped with a user's palm and fingers wrapped around its circumferential perimeter. When actuated with an actuator (not shown), a light source 12 inside the light pen emits a laser light beam 13 through an aperture 16 situated at one end of the laser pen. This laser light beam 13, although not visible unless it is traveling through dust or mist or other particulate matter in the air, will, if aimed at an object 14, strike that object with a visible spot of light 15, as illustrated. Of course, for this spot to appear visible on the object 14, the laser light pointer 1 must produce light with wavelengths in the visible light spectrum, and the object must reflect at least some of the wavelengths of that light so it can be seen with an observer's eye. Such a light pen will also typically contain a power source 17 such as one or more batteries schematically illustrated by the box 17, connected 18 to light source 12, for example, by the schematically illustrated encircled pair of wires referenced by 18. Laser pens of this type are often used, for example, in professional or academic presentations, where a person is speaking while using visual aids, and uses the laser pen to point at particular parts of the visual aid to which the speaker wishes to refer his or her audience at any given moment.
Many such similarly-configured laser light pens are disclosed in the prior art documents disclosed in an information disclosure filed with this application. In virtually all instances, light source 12 is disclosed to be seated within light pointer 1 such that the propagation direction of light beam 13 is longitudinally aligned with the elongation of the handle/casing 11. Even for those few laser pointers which are not elongated and which combine a laser light source 12 with, for example, a computer mouse, such as those disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 5,764,224; U.S. Pat. No. 6,295,051; U.S. Pat. No. 6,417,840; and U.S. Pat. No. 7,423,632; the light source 12 is configured such that the light beam 13 is projected from the end or the side of the mouse device, and not from its flat bottom surface.
While a customer shopping at a mercantile establishment as described earlier might be able to use such a light pen to point through a display case to select a particular object for the merchant to retrieve without ambiguity, the elongated shape and overall configuration of the light pen of FIG. 1 which represents virtually all the prior art in the field of light pointers, wherein the light propagation direction is longitudinally aligned with the elongation of the handle/casing 11, is not as conducive to selecting objects inside the display case, as other configurations to be disclosed herein which do not entail such an elongated casing aligned with the light propagation.
It would be desirable, in particular, to have available a light pointing device, specially configured and customized to solve the particular problem where a customer at a display counter wishes to select a particular object for retrieval by the merchant, without ambiguity. Such device itself, then becomes the vehicle through which the user shopping for merchandise displayed behind a display case can state to the merchant, without ambiguity: “That One™.”